Nov 15, 2008

Kalani Frazier came dancing and singing onto the stage like a cymbal crash of exuberance.

Through the glittery curtain and into the spotlight, she came out with delicious decadence and flagrant, shameless joy.

This, Frazier told the audience, is "Cabaret."

Outside, there might be an economic crisis, but inside is "Cabaret." Outside, the world might be coming to an end, but inside, there's theater and dancing, almost-naked girls. Outside, there might be repression, depression, and recession, but inside, in "Cabaret," you can forget all that.

"Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret," sang Frazier, backed by a chorus of dancing girls in the opening musical number of the Clayton State Theater's presentation of "Cabaret."

Daniel Silliman teaches American religion and culture at the University of Heidelberg. His research interests include American evangelicals and pentecostals, book history, atheism and secularity.

Silliman has a B.A. in philosophy from Hillsdale College and an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Tübingen. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation at Heidelberg on the representations of belief in contemporary evangelical fiction.

He previously worked as a reporter for a metro Atlanta newspaper, where he wrote about crime.

Francis Schaeffer's 1982 message to the Presbyterians at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was pretty simple: the philosophy of modern society is humanism, and humanism means death.